This book has both short-term and long-term implications. Poland and Hungary have recently been defying the Eurocrats of the European Union, and these two naughty upstarts have been upholding their national sovereignty and national culture. It is therefore hardly surprising that Poland and Hungary are the lightning rods of leftist ire. In addition, the undermining and discrediting of the religious and patriotic traditions of nations (white, Christian-majority ones, that is) is a long-term project of cultural Marxism (kulturowy marksizm).
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Author Mel Gordon is identified as professor of theater arts at the University of Berkeley in California. (p. 305). This book has extensive, and rather graphic, details on the many forms of pornographic life in pre-Nazi Berlin. The author catalogues many different forms of prostitutes, gays, lesbians, transvestites, etc. This was no fluke. There were between 500 and 1,000 erotic establishments in Weimar Berlin. (p. 256).
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My review is based on the original edition, published in April 1935. This book analyzes the situation of Jews in Nazi Germany in the first two years since Hitler came to power. It thus is pre-Holocaust, pre-WWII, pre-Kristallnacht, and pre-Nuremberg Laws. The book includes some interesting figures. For instance, the German cities with the largest Jewish populations in 1925 were: Berlin [with 172,672], Frankfurt on Main [29,835], Breslau (now Wroclaw) [23,240], Hamburg [19,794], and Koln (Cologne) [16,093]. (p. 5).
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Even the well-informed reader will learn much from this work. The comprehensiveness and depth of this tome is head, shoulders, and chest above that of Jan T. Gross and his Golden Harvest: Events at the Periphery of the Holocaust. (See also the Peczkis review therein).

WHY ANTI-POLONISM

In the Introduction, the editors trace historical developments. Communist propaganda smeared Poland as anti-Semitic, and the West welcomed this as a palliative for Yalta pangs of conscience. The rise of identity politics in American academia meant that the moral right always belonged to the minority, and criticism of Jews was dismissed as anti-Semitism. (pp. 13-14). [Of course, minority is a relative term. Next to the vastly more populous and powerful Germans and Russians, Poles are very much a minority!]
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Although this book is free of the strident Polonophobic formulations of many Jewish authors, it consistently repeats the well-worn standard narrative of the innocent victim Jew and the villainous Catholic Pole. It therefore has little to offer beyond an overview of Jewish events in today’s Poland. I have provided a list of books, in the comments section, as corrective for the biases of this book, for the interested reader.
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Author Yitzhak Laor has been lauded as one of Israel’s most prominent dissidents and poets. Much of his work focuses on what he considers the injustices of Israel against the Palestinians. There is even censorship in action. For example, Laor comments, “In today’s Israel, it is not that easy to research the atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers in the war of 1948. People have lost their jobs in Israeli universities for less than that.” (p. 57).
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